National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun on Monday vowed to forge a parliamentary climate in which lawmakers work harder and pass uncontested economic bills in a timely manner.

During a speech at a forum, hosted by the Korea News Editors' Association, Chung also said that the Assembly is pushing to establish a voting information system, which will reveal how actively each lawmaker carries out his or her legislative duties.

The system will be up and running by the time the regular parliamentary session begins on Sept. 1, he said.

"(I) will establish a system and climate to ensure that uncontested bills, related to people's livelihoods, will be passed in a timely manner," he said. "The legislature should never appear to be in a vegetative state due to political strife."

South Korea's legislature has often been derided as being overly confrontational, with members putting partisan agendas above the interests of ordinary people. Such a stance has oftentimes delayed the passage of both contested and uncontested bills, with parliament's failures to promptly vote on economic bills usually drawing the most flak from the public.

"What people want is a legislature that works for them," Chung said.

Meanwhile, Chung criticized the current and past conservative administrations' approaches toward North Korea, saying that their policies centered on pressuring the communist regime have borne little fruit.

"There must not be an unfortunate situation in which (North Korea's) Kim Jong-un regime makes an extreme choice due to a sanctions-centric approach," he said, stressing the need to use both dialogue and pressure to persuade Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear program. (Yonhap)